Cutting the cable to a GPS Aerial

[Gerry]

I have a garmin GPS aerial (GA29 I think) mounted on my A frame on a stainless steel threaded base. Since I keep my RIB in the garage, I'm pushed for height and have to unbolt the GPS aerial base (and the VHF) everytime I put it away.

I've got hold of a much shorter plastic mount for the GPS aerial which just takes enough height off to avoid having to unscrew the base every time.

Now I need to swap the bases, it seems that the cable into the GPS aerial is hard wired. There isn't much slack in the cable for me to tell definitively, but I'd hoped there'd be some sort of connector in there.

So I need to cut the cable to remove the old base, fit the new one and reconnect the cable. Is this a good idea? Would it be a good idea to add a connector male/female - in which case, what type? Or should I should I just re-solder and try and make it as waterproof as possible?

Any advice would be welcome.

Thanks,

Gerry

[Downhilldai]

Ideally, unscrew the connector from the back of the GPS, unwind 3 miles of spiral wrap, pull the cable up through the A frame and out, then re-run the cable with the new base in situ.
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or, you could cut the cable and reconnect using a soldered joint and heatshrink, but that would invalidate the warranty of the antenna, if it still has one. I think the GA29 uses coaxial cable

[jwalker]

Jointing

It's always worth doing a search.

[captnjack]

Can you just mount the antenna on the side of the A-frame?

[Chris]

I am assuming that the current mount is like a plastic tube through which the arial passes?

In which case can you not just cut it away and the cut a slot into the new mount.

If you can avoid cutting the cable its worth it.

[Gerry]

Thanks for the advice guys.

The cable goes inside the A frame, through the under floor ducting and up into the console, so couldn't face extracting all of that. The aerial is mounted on a stainless steel base, quite tall (Ribcraft quality?!), so cutting it off wasn't an option.

I chopped it yesterday evening. It's quite thin coax cable, so was fairly straightforward. Removed the old base, remembered to thread the cable through the new plastic base before re-connecting (!!) and carefully re-soldered and insulated. It acquired the satellites fine when I tested it afterwards, so assume it's OK.

It's now a perfect height for sitting in the garage (with the front of the trailer propped up a little bit more to give a bit more margin at the back). So that saves a bit of extra bother when getting the boat out. Mind you, I still have to remove the front of the drawbar on the trailer and deflate the tubes to get it in the garage...

Cheers,

Gerry